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Arisia 2018 Panels have been announced and it looks like I'm going to be on a bunch in 2018. Go me!

Arisia, if you don't know, is a small fan-run, fan-centered annual SFF convention in Boston. I've had incredible experiences in the past taking part in panels on literature, media, gaming, and science.

Two of the panels, "Writing Horror, the Occult, and the Macabre" and "Emotional Impact — How to Make Readers Care," are the first writing panels I've been invited to. I'm not claiming mastery in either but with a few stories under my belt I hope I have a few useful things to share.

I'm also on the "2017: The Year in Stephen King" panel which was my reach goal for the year. I count myself as an enormous fan of King's oeuvre and this has certainly been a banner year for the author from Bangor. From television series based on his work (Delores Claiborne and The Mist) to a pair of movies (one reportedly terrible and one I quite enjoyed…

Issue 2.1 went live today over at Collateral Journal and my flash story, "The Ferry Back," is available for reading!

I wrote this story years ago as a part of a writing challenge. The professor of my last graduate class plopped a bag of odds and ends on the table in front of us, gave a moment to choose an item before giving us twenty minutes to write something about it.

The object described in this story, a small white patch of the Niagara Ferry, somehow seemed from the same era as the Vietnam war. The resulting story, while having very little connection to any actual event in my life, nevertheless feels like a summation of a certain portion of my childhood. Growing up I always had this sense what my father and my grandfather experienced in the wars they fought were still very much happening. Like these conflicts never really ended but went on and on and on.

This story deserved a great home and I'm pleased to see it offered along side the other tremendous stories on this…

"So, what is Cosmic Weird?" said Lance Newblood of the Rocket Legionnaires, twisting the control yoke of his YD-3000 combat vehicle to the left. "Is it something new or simply nostalgia?"

Twin neon spirals of anti-ship rockets blazed past, close enough he could have spit on them. If he dared, that is, open his cockpit to the cold embrace of vacuum.

"Cosmic Weird is science fiction, a sub-genre within Space Opera," replied Commander Athena Madison over the staticy commline. Encased in her famous crimson survival mesh, she weaved without effort between the combat droids of the Tethyan Hierarchy, the control fields of her suit interacting with separate Eisentein frames to propell her forward, backward, and sideways with shocking ease. Very little of this suit made sense to Lance or any other reputable scientist, but it worked. In a universe filled with implacable and deadly foes like the Hierarchy, the government could be forgiven for overlooking a few arcane …

Gehenna and Hinnom has released the cover and table of contents for their "Transhuman SF" anthology which just so happens to include my story "Machinery of Ghosts." Could you check out this cover for a second? Total sci fi awesomeness! The presale for the digital version goes out Nov. 15th and both book and e-book will be available for purchase Nov. 30th. In any case, my story is about a long is a SF thriller set in a decaying space station in the grip of a nano-technological cold war. Thank you again to C.P. Dunphey for giving this story the perfect home! Expect a few more words about the story once pre-orders are available as this story has a bit of a back story attached to it.

November promises to be a busy month as I also have a flash piece appearing in Collateral Journal, an online magazine devoted to exploring the consequences of war outside of battlegrounds. My story, "The Ferry Back" will be appearing in their next issue, set to be released on Nove…